Read enough pre-release commentary, and you might begin to think that Distant Relatives, Nas and Damian Marley’s new collaborative album, is unprecedented, transformative, and revelatory—not because it features great music, but merely because it exists. And it’s not just Universal’s press kit doing the talking: During an on-stage discussion at the Grammy Museum last year, Nas and Marley made clear that this would be an entirely new and unique record. And last December, the National Geographic Society hosted a panel in D.C. about the diverse roots of hip-hop, with Relatives as the event’s focal point.
All this talk is tossed aside by the album itself, which very rarely sounds “important” and mostly just sounds like a lot of fun. Relatives finds Marley and Nas in surprisingly humble form; at this point, the multiplatinum Queensbridge rap giant and the multi-talented, Grammy Award-winning son of Bob can sell out anything from amphitheaters to, well, panel discussions. But there’s very little ego evident on an album that could easily have had double the dosage. Even more unexpectedly, Nas seems perfectly content to let Marley take the reins; the latter gets more verses and handles all-important production duties with his brother Stephen.